John Ball Park — Attraction in Grand Rapids

I grew up mere blocks away from John Ball Zoo, and even attended a one-year school program for 6th graders which was based at the zoo ("Zoo School"). I have very fond memories of JBZ.

As a whole, John Ball Zoo is a fine small zoo which is a perfect weekend (or weekday) excursion with the kids. During the event days, such as the "Zoo Lights" lantern festival, it's even more enjoyable with family and friends.

It's a relatively small zoo, built into the hills of Grand Rapids' West Side neighborhood. As far as developed and exhibited area, it's merely 40 acres or so. If you include the surrounding John Ball Park, which mostly pulls double-duty as parking for the zoo nowadays, it's actually quite a large zoo, but without amenities or exhibited attractions, the Park is mainly for picnics and school recess.

The exhibits are overall well-maintained, but most are a bit aged, with the exception of the Pygmy Hippo exhibit, which was built recently. The aquarium within the zoo is small and could do with some significant expansion and refreshment. In fact, the same could be said for most of the exhibits: they are showing their age and size.

Amenities are plentiful and well-maintained. There are several snack huts, concession stands, and restrooms, all accessible and generally clean. On busy days, like any public space, maintenance and cleanliness may suffer, but the staff do their best to keep the space clean.

There is an event space atop the Zoo which is used for weddings and other events, which is wonderful, clean, and easily accessed either by foot or the "funicular", which is a short gondola ride up the hill to the event space.

The zip line and ropes courses offer fun distractions for the adventurous, and the petting zoo provides ample petting time for the little ones.

Overall, John Ball Zoo does an excellent job flexing it's limited size. Past efforts to expand the zoo into the surrounding park land was met with fierce opposition from local residents, but would be a very welcome change for the Zoo if it were to be attempted again. John Ball Zoo could be a keystone attraction for Grand Rapids, on par with the Detroit Zoo, Phoenix Zoo, or San Diego Zoo, if the right funding and marketing were to conjoin. I would welcome such a change.

Until such a time, enjoy a relatively inexpensive, fun day at John Ball Zoo, especially during special event days. The Zoo would be happy to...

I've rented a scooterpal here several times in the past, and it's been a great experience. The kids love them, and they've been a life saver for my (prematurely) arthritic joints! Unfortunately, they've 'upgraded' them with a (horribly broken) mechanism that slows down the pals in some areas, and prevents them from running entirely in the others. Here are the problems with this:

1- We wanted to go on the the back wild way trail (which is understandably a no-go, since it's not paved), so I drove the pal near the entrance and parked it. When I came back, the LED on the dash turned red and the pal would not move, because it had decided that the place that it had allowed me to drive and park it was now inside the "no" zone. I had to manually push it 15-20 feet (which was very difficult) before it would run again. Ridiculous.

2- The entire deck above the monkey house is marked as a 'no' zone, breaking the loop through the Americas. The thinking behind this inscrutable, since the deck can obviously handle the weight and is more than wide enough to accommodate the device.

3- The only way around that deck without backtracking through the entire zoo is to take a tiny little path (which is far less well suited to accommodate the pal) that has been marked as a 'slow' zone. The transition from normal speed to slow speed is jarring and unpleasant. This isn't the same deal-killer that the utterly broken no-go implementation is, but it feels like they did this to try to find a use for the shiny new feature rather than solve a problem that was occurring in real life ... and it's to the detriment of the experience.

We've rented one of these things for all of our recent zoo trips because I have trouble with my knees, the kids love it, and I've always felt awkward on power chairs since I'm visually pretty fit, can easily walk short distances, and have no obvious physical handicaps. People don't look at you funny when you're riding one of these with your kid and hop off to walk up to an exhibit like they do if you get up off a chair, so they've been amazing for our zoo trips. Unfortunately, the new restrictions kind of ruin them by cutting off an entire loop through the zoo. You can now choose not to rent one, not to go to the Americas section, or to do a ton of backtracking to...

We visited on a Wednesday, during the day with a group. Most the animals were hidden or not there, the one ride was closed, many closed animal areas. The only thing that looked kept up was the Chinese lantern thing that I guess is at night for additional cost. The penguins and otter very active and fun, The chimps were great but looked like they had mange. No giraffes, elephants, big lions, etc one lioness barely could see, One tiger we could see his head. Only one really small shark. A ton of walking it took so long to get everywhere just to keep encouraging the kids that we’d see something all to see empty exhibits or one leg of something. The Photo Booth was broke. We spent a lot of extra money to make up for the kids to have a good time at least they had some stuff like the VR glasses so they could see sharks, gift shop and play area and sitting areas were nice to eat snacks. The gem gold digging was fun, but again additional cost. Snacks were very pricey. Gift shop some children small toy sets were $5 . The one hoodie had Chinese stuff on it for $70 most other logo hoodies $70 sale ones were $40. I think the main focus was on the lantern thing, beautiful but not really the purpose of the zoo. The penny smashing maching doesn’t take Pennys it was card only for $4.00 for 4 pennys and other coin machine was 4 for $15. Free and close parking was nice. I wouldn’t go back unless I knew it was significantly kept up better with major enhancements. Which is sad because it’s a great place to...